I have learned so many new things

       Bonsoir! Comment allez-vous? J'ai appris de nouvelles choses. (Hello. How are you? I learned new things.) Now i've started learning more big words and sentences such as Coup de foudre which means thuderbolt or striking of light.
 

      One of the other things I have done to get me to hear French more is looking up more videos and also interviews of celebrities that speak French such as Joseph Gordan. I've been using charts that I've written down to help me translate what they are saying while they are talking to the reporter. The challenging part of watching the videos is keeping up with each word they are saying. I would have to keep replaying the videos to hear the words that ive missed.

       Also, the other challenging part is the pronunciation. French has many soft consonants, vowels and silent letters.This means most of the words you use, you would not usually use the back of your throat when you talk. I read more about French pronunciation  on  http://french.about.com/cs/pronunciation/a/mistakes.htm. This website has given me more information about each topic that is used in pronouncing French. It has also shown me the best way to really get the pronunciation right is to work with a native French speaker, someone who is specific in accent training.

        I can't wait to learn so much more! lets see if I can learn numbers in French. Wish me luck ;)
       
       

     

   

Beginning process of learning French

      Bonjour, je m'appelle Danielle. This means my name is Danielle. This is the first thing I learned in French.

      French is more complicated than I thought. There are certain ways that you have to use punctuation with each word.  Also, to learn French, you have to learn the basics first, such as the alphabets, basic greetings or phrases, and small sentences.

     French is really the language of love.  The French word "roman" means novel or romance. This word helps you see how it all started that French is a romance language, which means a Latin base language. Other romance languages include Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian. The Romans conquerd over many places of the world but it was really the French who really spread out their language hundreds of years ago. French is in many places such as Madagascar, Canada, and parts of Africa. The Romans official language was Latin. When the Romans started to colonize other places of the world, they started mixing Latin with other languages.

   The first basic things that I learned were the alphabet ,which is similar to Spanish but the pronunciation and saying it with the accent is different. Plus, I learned a  "special" ;) new word from Ms. Heckert, and some French words are in the book we are reading.

    This process is going to take longer then I thought, but it's really cool and fun to do. Let's see what else I can learn and memorize this week.

How difficult is it to learn a second language?

 

How difficult is it to learn a second language?

We all know there are many different languages such as Spanish, French, Russian, English, and Italian. They also all represent differences in religion and culture. Some languages have similar pronounciations and spellings making it easier to learn more than one language. My dad speaks French fluently and because of that he can understand a lot of Spanish.  He told me how he took French in high school but didn't become fluent until he spent a school year in Senegal, Africa while attending Georgetown University.  There were different languages used there but predominantly French, so he was forced to use it and because of that became fluent.

The reason French got my attention is because it is one of the languages of love. I like the different sounds that come out of each word and letter. I also like how people interact with the language. With the help of my dad and the Spanish I have learned, I hope it will be easy for me to learn French.

Follow me with the help of my dad on my journey of learning French. I hope to learn where the language came from and the different countries that speak predominantly French.